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LABOUR

_ Upcoming layoffs
spurs demonstration
of VGH workers

Vancouver General Hospital patient
Jack Cooper has a hole in his throat and
cannot speak. Still, he found a way to
communicate his anger over the threa-
tened layoff of 260 hospital staff Dec. 4.

“Vander Zalm will have RNs (regis-
tered nurses) doing the work of practical
nurses as well as their own work,”’ Cooper
warned via the medium of magic slate.

_ Standing alongside an intravenous unit
similar to the one that feeds him, Cooper
added a patient’s “voice” to the protest by
several hundred hospital workers outside
the VGH on West 12th Avenue.

In Cooper’s opinion, licenced practical
nurses — LPNs, as they are known —
add that “personal human touch” in
which they are the specialists. Yet VGH
Management, facing a 1987 budget over-

B.C. Federation of Labour president Ken
Georgetti.

Georgetti, who arrived with dozens of
other delegates from the B.C. Federation
of Labour convention, told a rally follow-
ing the demonstration: “Every time the
health care system is dealt another blow by
the government, we must be there to draw
attention to it — every time.”

Hospital Employees Union member
Fred Muzin said the hospital’s financial
malaise is “part of the government’s
agenda to privatize public services.”

Unfortunately, “when the cuts come
down, the administration doesn’t say that
the government is bad or wrong. They just
try to accommodate them,” Muzin
charged.

He said Workers Compensation Board

Hospital.

psychiatric institution, slated to be phased
out over five years, another hospital staff
member revealed.

The staff member, who wished to
remain un-named, is a member of a joint
employee-management day care commit-
tee. The space now reserved for the ward
was to be a day care centre for employees,
the staff member said.

(Local municipal officials and unions
have warned that the deinstitutionalizing
Riverview and other Lower Mainland
institutions will severely strain already
inadequate resources.)

HEU business manager Jack Gerow addresses rally outside Vancouver General

Lucille Wilkinson, an LPN representa-
tive at Vancouver General, told the rally
that replacing orderlies, aides and practi-
cal-nurses with RNs will add about 30 per
cent per individual to health care costs.

Speculation is that the higher-paid RNs
will be hired, but not in sufficient numbers
to replace the staff laid off.

HEU business manager Jack Gerow
said the hospital had attempted to disrupt
the demonstration by offering a cheap
turkey dinner to entice staff away from the
lunch-time demonstration. “But the only
cheap turkey I knowis Bill Vander Zalm,”

Tun of $800,000, is planning to lay off _ statistics show an increase in back injuries The HEU reports that VGH manage- }. NR ae A
some 260 LPNs phe ane sant and among hospital staff, which he said was ment told the unions in November that i PE eh |
d replace some of them with the higher-paid _ due to staff shortages that force hospital _ layoffs could be expected as early as Janu- We are going to resist the layoff of any |
, registered nurses, hospital unions charge. workers to try to lift patients by them- ary, 1988, and that no practical nurses, health care worker in any facility in this

The protest underscored what com-
mentators are calling the crisis of health
care in B.C.

“We're here demonstrating today to
draw public attention to the destruction of
the health care system in B.C.,” declared

selves: “Meanwhile, look at what (Workers
Compensation Board director) Jim Niel-
son is doing to the WCB.”

Meanwhile, the hospital has plans to
create a special out-patient ward to deal
with patients released from the Riverview

orderlies or patient care aides were secure
from possible layoff.

The unions calculate that some 16 per
cent of the hospital’s 1,750 regular full-
time and part-time employees could be
affected.

province. It is our duty and our responsi-
bility to see to it that Bill Vander Zalm
comes to his senses,”’ he said.

Said Wilkinson: “We intend to stop this
erosion of health care and we are going to
start right here at Vancouver General.”

3

Season’s Greetings and
Best Wishes for the New Year to all
our friends in the labor movement

INTERNATIONAL

LONGSHOREMENS
& WAREHOUSEMEN'S
UNION! cca0s'.0°

=

a,

Peace and
Unity in
1988.

Ken Georgetti
President

Cliff Andstein
Secretary-Treasurer

On Behalf of
our members
and staff

we extend

Season’s

ae

_—

Greetings.

United Food and Comercial Workers
Local 2000, 379-12th St.,

New Westminster, V3M 4H2
Phone: 525-8811

United Fishermen and
Allied Workers’ Union

veston Shoreworkers Local #472
Seis Local #8 Unit B, 5261 Lane St,
Burnaby, VS5H 2H4
Phone: 430-3056

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 16, 1987 e 5